17 July 2015

A new book: Eurasianism and the European Far Right

Lexington Books published a volume Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship edited by Marlène Laruelle, to which I contributed two chapters.

Description:

The 2014 Ukrainian crisis has highlighted the pro-Russia stances of some European countries, such as Hungary and Greece, and of some European parties, mostly on the far-right of the political spectrum. They see themselves as victims of the EU “technocracy” and liberal moral values, and look for new allies to denounce the current “mainstream” and its austerity measures. These groups found new and unexpected allies in Russia. As seen from the Kremlin, those who denounce Brussels and its submission to U.S. interests are potential allies of a newly re-assertive Russia that sees itself as the torchbearer of conservative values. Predating the Kremlin’s networks, the European connections of Alexander Dugin, the fascist geopolitician and proponent of neo-Eurasianism, paved the way for a new pan-European illiberal ideology based on an updated reinterpretation of fascism. Although Dugin and the European far-right belong to the same ideological world and can be seen as two sides of the same coin, the alliance between Putin’s regime and the European far-right is more a marriage of convenience than one of true love. This unique book examines the European far-right’s connections with Russia and untangles this puzzle by tracing the ideological origins and individual paths that have materialized in this permanent dialogue between Russia and Europe.

Part I: Alexander Dugin’s Trajectory: Mediating European Far Right to Russia
Chapter 2: Alexander Dugin and the West European New Right, 1989–1994, Anton Shekhovtsov
Chapter 3: Moscow State University’s Department of Sociology and the Climate of Opinion in Post-Soviet Russia, Vadim Rossman

Part IV: Conclusions: The European Far Right at Moscow’s Service?
Chapter 10: Far-Right Election Observation Monitors in the Service of the Kremlin’s Foreign Policy, Anton Shekhovtsov

Praise:

Marlene Laruelle has assembled an impressive team of authors, who show that Alexander Dugin’s Eurasianism is best understood as an offshoot of the European Far Right, and not a product of Russia’s distinctive cultural heritage. This makes for an interesting contribution to the far reaches of the history of European political thought.

— Peter Rutland, Wesleyan University

This collection contributes significantly to the burgeoning international field of comparative fascism studies, while also allowing some of the inner metapolitical logic of Putin's foreign policy to become transparent and intelligible. An important book which should be read by all those who claim to be experts on the machinations of contemporary Russia, and which finally puts some substance into vapid discussions of its 'fascism'.

— Roger Griffin, Oxford Brookes University

This well-designed volume fills a crucial gap in our understanding of the ideological (and sometimes personal) ties connecting Eurasianist philosophers in Russia (especially the infamous Alexander Dugin) with surging anti-immigrant and far-right ultranationalist political parties in Europe and Turkey. Marlene Laruelle assembles an international cast of experts to examine these questions with depth and nuance, focusing on implications for Putin’s Kremlin and the evolving international order. A boon for scholars, this work will also serve as a reference for journalists and other analysts trying to understand the complexities of the Russian-European relationship today.

4 comments:

Can I translate your opinions published on this blog and elsewhere into Spanish? I totally agree with all of your opinions about Putin, Ukraine and far-right movements. Somewhen in the future I will also write a book on my theories about the "Nexus of the radical left/right, islamism and third-worldism" which I want to publish also in Spanish, that will contain your opinions. I translate this into SPanish because of my personal strong ties to Argentina and my desire to create an alternative to Russian disinformation activities (mainly activities of RT) in this country.

I usually permit to translate and/or re-publish everything that I write for my blog with only two conditions: (1) the translation/re-publication is not used for commercial purposes, (2) the web-site mentions my name as the author and provides a link to the original publication.

Greetings Professor Shekhovstov, I recently published the following article on Counterpunch you may be interested in http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/02/10/dugins-occult-fascism-and-the-hijacking-of-left-anti-imperialism-and-muslim-anti-salafism/ and only learned about your work after it was published. We appear to agree on the core issues regarding Duginism.

I also just learned about this volume you have reviewed on your blog and was wondering if there is a pdf of it somewhere because the price range for a hardcopy is really steep for me.